Gateway To Health (1953)

Tuna, Pennsylvania, lives and works an interesting man. He is Dr. Fred D. Miller, a dentist. The interesting thing is that the people in his practice are different in one respect. They enjoy unusually good dental health as a group, way above average. They're people you'd like to know. So, we want you to meet them. >> Mrs. Jones, this is Dr. Miller. Billy is on his way home now. Yes, everything was fine. His teeth and gums are in fine condition. Strong and healthy as can be. I'm proud of that boy. This is the third time he's had his teeth cleaned and no other work was needed. I wish I could have grown up with the teeth and health he has. Oh yes. In fact, I was a bad dental before I finished school 40 years ago. And I found out the hard way that it was all a preventable tragedy. It just didn't have to happen at all. That's why I have concentrated all these years on learning and helping others to learn how to prevent bad teeth, how to keep them sound and healthy. And not only healthy teeth, but a completely healthy body. Thank you, Mrs. Jones, and thank you for your cooperation. With that kind of help, the secret of health is very simple. Goodbye. Would you like to know the secret, too? >> Actually, of course. It's no secret. It's just something waiting for people to learn. No, there isn't any hocus pocus about it. No magic. It doesn't hurt. But you have to put your mind to it. If you do, then you may have teeth like these. Here are twins. Not a bit of tooth decay in their mouth. This girl didn't have a good start by any means. At the age of six, she had horrible baby teeth. She was a nervous, frightened child. But she and her parents learned about good dental health, and they stuck to it. Today, she is a healthy, active young lady. She has healthy bone and gums and beautiful, permanent teeth. Her mouth looks just as good as the mouths of other patients of mine. patients who got off to a much better start. These youngsters, all in one family, are as healthy as can be. These fine teeth belong to some of those who came to the office one day to have their pictures taken. There were 32 young people, all between the ages of 5 and 28, and they all had perfect teeth without a single cavity. We've made wonderful improvements in the control of many diseases. We proudly believe we are becoming healthier and healthier. But we've become worse and worse in dental disease. Do you realize that? Why dental decay is occurring six times as fast as we dentists can repair the damage? This can't be corrected by doing any one thing like being vaccinated against a germ disease. What we eat and when we eat it is the great thing we have been neglecting in the care of our teeth. This is the chief difference between the splendid examples I've been showing you from my own practice and the bad examples the dental cripples we rounded up to show you here. Each of the youngsters with bad mouths is actually suffering from starvation. No, not because they couldn't get enough to eat, but because they and their parents didn't realize the importance of what they eat. They drink sweet drinks at all hours. They eat candy and other sweets before meals. This spoils their appetite for the things the body requires. It crowds out of the diet the things that must come first. So, they begin to be starved, literally starved. This is something that sneaked up on us while we weren't looking. Find a child in school who doesn't have tooth decay. By the age of 16, the average person has more than 10 cavities. What about you? Dental science has a great deal yet to learn about the causes of tooth decay. But this we do know. Tooth decay in the mouths we now suffer is not a natural condition. >> Let's look around us then and see whether nature has something to tell us. Rarely does a land animal lose a tooth through decay. Animals by their nature live in particular places. Cows and horses in fields, lions in jungles, and by this means their choice of food is determined for them. The selection has become a natural instinct. They eat what they find where they live and find a balanced diet naturally. The shape of the jaws and the arrangement of the teeth of different animals can show us quite a lot about how they live and how they eat. A horse eats vegetation, but he picks it up from the ground. He eats different kinds of grasses. He too swings his jaw from side to side when he chews. But look at his teeth. Lions and tigers eat meat. They don't chew their food, but they do bite it and tear it. A leopard's jaws are very much like the jaws of a lion or a tiger. In front, he has sharp, pointed teeth for tearing his meat. His back teeth are sharp blades. The two commonest animals that eat both meat and vegetation are pigs and people. And sometimes they don't look so much different when they're eating either. The teeth of the human are less differentiated than those of the browsing animals. The front teeth are cutting teeth. The back teeth are flattened for grinding. We've had to become able to eat a very large variety of foods wherever we might be. Would you like to see how the action of the jaws and the teeth would look if you had X-ray eyes? An X-ray camera sees this. Many of our foods cling and stick on the teeth like this. As we'll see, some of our other foods naturally help us take care of this. Human beings are different from other animals because we are thinking animals. But because humans can think, we must therefore think carefully about selecting the foods that will give us the properly balanced diet. We've had to become able to eat a very large variety of food that might be found wherever we might be. Everyone knows that the bloodstream supplies the different parts of the body and keeps them alive and healthy. The bloodstream feeds the teeth too. Here in this diagram, you can see where the blood vessels and nerves enter the tooth and go into the pulp chamber through these little tube-like openings in what we call the dentine. A strong bonyike material that is the main part of the tooth. And here forming the surface we see is the enamel, the hardest substance in your body. Whether you remember these names or not, remember that the tooth is alive. So don't wait for a toothache to remind you of it. It's alive and must constantly be nourished. And the enamel, hard though it is, is a place where the cavities start. Once the enamel is damaged by a cavity, it is lost forever. It will never grow together again as a cut on your finger does. You have to go to the dentist to get it filled. Now, here is a slice of the tooth mounted in clear plastic. We wanted to see if we could take a picture of a cavity forming. So, we went to John who is a specialist in this kind of photography. >> Time-lapse motion picture photography makes it possible to increase greatly the speed of action. Here is a flower growing pictured at a speed several thousand times faster than normal. Our special camera apparatus is doing the same thing as it watches our tooth. A tooth with no decay. It is encased in plastic except for one small area against which we have fitted the open end of a tube. This liquid we are pouring into it is an ordinary flavored drink. We want to see whether the tooth enamel, hard and sound as it is, will be harmed when it is left entirely unprotected. The opening at the bottom of the tube is mounted firmly against the tooth. The liquid in it is held continually against one spot on the enamel. We're going to photograph it through magnifying lenses. Whatever change takes place will be speeded up so we can see it occur. When we see it in time lapse, we're going to be so near it that only a part of the tooth will show. Here it is. The tooth is at the right. The irregular line to the left is where the edge of the tooth and the open end of the tube are sealed together. Keep your eye there. One month has passed. See that darkening? That's where the liquid is eating its way into the tooth enamel. The penetration goes more slowly through the fourth and fifth months. This experiment was based on a technique devised by Dr. FC Basich of the University of Chicago. We might have tried any one of a number of foods or beverages, but this flavored drink was convenient for our purpose. The tooth was unprotected. No brushing, no help from the foods that cleanse as we eat them. Unfortunately, when a cavity once gets started, it almost never stops growing by itself. It just continues getting larger and larger until the damage begins to affect the dentine. And then the nerve begins to carry pain sensations. And pretty soon, it's too late to do anything except to take the tooth out. The loss of even one tooth can be serious. It causes those on each side of the gap to be displaced unless an artificial one is inserted. This time our example is a 54 year old gentleman. Isn't it remarkable how good his teeth are? All 32 of them. He is Dr. Clive McKay, professor of nutrition at Cornell University. Dr. McKay will show us why the order in which we eat our foods is important. After eating sticky food, eat something that is juicy and crisp. So, next, an apple. Dr. McKay agrees with me. There is something more here than the cleansing effect of the fruit on the teeth. The juicy flavor of the apple starts his mouth watering, increasing the saliva flow. That's important because the saliva has the job of helping to shield and protect the teeth against decay. Its ability to do so depends, of course, on our general nourishment and health. We can see this again with another of my patients, Bill Hughes. Bill's been a patient of mine ever since he was born. And I want to show you these beautiful teeth so that you can get just an idea of just what an almost perfect set of teeth should look like. Drop your tongue back, Bill. That's better. Now snap your teeth together, Bill. Hard. Hard. Harder. That's the way teeth should sound. Now let's look at these gums. Now close, Bill. Now we're going to give Bill a cookie to chew. Go ahead, Bill. Chew this up. Show us how a cookie should be chewed. Fine. Now, let's take a little better look at this being chewed. Now, bite. Go ahead. Now, chew. Notice how thoroughly that uh cookie has been masticated. Now open, Bill, I want to show them the residue that's left there. Look at the sticky residue. Now swallow, Bill. Chew it and swallow and get your mouth as free from that as possible. That's better. Now, let's see. Now, notice even after swallowing the sticky residue of material that's left adhering to those teeth. I'm going to show you the best way to clean those teeth. Bill, take a couple of bites of that apple. Now, a little faster, Bill. That's it. Chew it up real hard. Give it to business now. Let's see. Let's see what's happening in here. Notice how that chewing stroke comes from the outside in. That's important. Notice how the tongue keeps that food on the teeth. Now swallow. Now let's see. See how clean they are. Every tooth is just as clean as can be because of the action of that succulent fruit. Do you wonder that I argue fruit should be made available all the time at home, at school, at work, how succulent that is, how it squirts the juice as the cells are crunched. To get the natural vitamins and minerals and to get the juicy foods and the crisp foods, we need fruits and vegetables. Look at them stacked here in the market. They look mighty pretty when they are laid out together like that, don't they? And just as our eyes respond to the variety of red, yellow, green, and white fruits and vegetables, so do our system. Here's good eating. The bitey goodness of firm natural flour, breads, milk, cheese, and eggs, meats, seafood. Our healthy children like the way their mothers cooked vegetables, not overdone, but leaving the flavor and goodness in. They go for fresh vegetables, the carrot sticks and so on. And for dessert, fruit. Sometimes they have ice cream or a sweet, but always a fruit to finish, whether at the table or not. Same way if they want a bite between meals, fruit's the thing. After the evening meal, when they're ready to study or to read or to look at a television, the fruit bowl is out there for them to help themselves. This is Janet Blair, another of my patients. Do you blame me for being proud of her? As she grew up, she took care of those teeth that make that smile. She is very conscientious about her food habits. Today, she is a famous actress, singer, and dancer. She's relaxing here after having played more than 1,200 consecutive performances of South Pacific without missing a single show. See what I mean when I say it's fun to be healthy? Well, it's up to you. For you have learned the simple fact that in the daily care of your teeth, the most important thing is what you eat and when you eat it. Sure, brush your teeth. Don't neglect it. and remember how important it is to get them clean as soon as possible after eating and go to your dentist regularly for his professional care. But this is not enough. You have to do your part. You have to build positive health, your entire health. You have to bring good appetites to good meals. You have to watch the order in which you eat your food. By the simple rearrangement of the order in which foods are eaten, you can reduce the incidence to tooth decay. And when the toothbrush isn't there and you don't have a chance to use it, that's a double reason why you should remember to clean your teeth with an apple. End your meal with a fruit. It's fun to be healthy. [Applause]